Say it with kids: Today nearly 5,000 children took part in Kids Ocean Day, a beach clean up program sponsored by the LA Stormwater Program, the Los Angeles Board of Public Works, the Malibu Foundation, California Coastal Commission and Aerial Art. Last year, the message was "Save our Ocean." Today it was "Sustain life."Click on the image to learn more about Ocean Day.

May 26: The SeaDoc Society fishes out hundreds of dumped toilets from the waters off Pt. Dume. Photo: UC Davis. Click on the image to learn more about SeaDoc and its drive against marine debris.

Talk about teachable moments: Late showers in Southern California may have intensified a lesson in marine pollution today for thousands of kids at Dockweiler Beach and sponsored by the LA Stormwater Program. “And here’s how run-off works” … For information about the stormwater program, click here.

Meanwhile, elsewhere around Southern California, Heal the Bay published its Beach Report Card, which showed five of the ten most polluted beach areas in the state were in Los Angeles County. Click here for the report. However, seventy-nine percent of county beaches received A’s or Bs, compared to 70% last year, reports the Los Angeles Times.

Moving from beaches into the surf itself, the SeaDoc Society began a week-long program fishing out lost fishing gear, tires and, yes, an estimated 500 toilets, from waters around Point Dume. Click here for a Malibu Times story on the project, or here to learn more about SeaDoc, an offshoot of UC Davis’s School of Veterinary Medicine. Beyond the clean-up, SeaDoc wants to publicize the Lost Fishing Gear Recovery Project. Click here to learn about how to report abandoned gear.

Finally, from the department of beaches, the Surfrider Foundation would like to alert the uninitiated to its new blog, KnowYourH2O. For those simply in search of the weather, click on the map to be taken to the National Weather Service.